I'm a little confused we just did a video on Sony's link butts whose claim
to fame is that they've got this donut-shaped hole in the middle allowing
Ambient sound to pass through giving them effectively an open-backed sound
Sony Then followed up on these with the link buds s the opposite of that the
linkblood's S are an active noise canceling product that do not have any
kind of open-backed sound pass-through design they just use software to allow
you to hear the sound around you just like well any other ANC earphones my
questions are two then a Sony why did you use the link Bud's name to describe
something so totally different and B why
should I care about wow okay they're really light Sony says these are the
smallest and lightest true Wireless active noise canceling earphones and
they they are astonishingly light here's
one of our ANC mics you can see that right there here's our charging contacts
here's the proximity sensor so it can tell if it's in your ear they've got
this cool new software feature that's kind of like a soundtrack to your life
they're supposed to know where you are and what you're doing so you know right
after you get off of a call they'll might behave in a certain way or if you
put them in your ears maybe they just start Auto playing music for you right
here that looks like our either microphone or microphone array for voice
pickup these might actually be around the same size as the airpods pros I
still haven't found something to replace them day to day the fp8s from LG are so
close but the shape of the carrying case is just not as ideal I mean the link
buds are super cool but I do need ANC that's a feature I care about a lot
there's just nothing that beats the pocket ability of this for me and you
can see even now on the link buds s Sony's carrying case is markedly thicker
but in terms of its X and Y it's actually about the darn near the same
the thing is if the not apples of the world were offering substantially more
battery life or features out of this extra bulk it would be a lot easier to
forgive but in general they're not this one is rated at 20 hours of battery life
in the case plus six from the earphones themselves for a total of about 26 which
is solid but not
not groundbreaking one thing that's really cool that I'm noticing though is
they've got this kind of ribbed texture
on the silicone ear tips that I would
think I mean this is just intuitively speaking I don't have any empirical
evidence for it but I would think would help them stay in your ears more easily
wow those are man like I can tell in my
hand that they're small but these are really compact I do not
anticipate that there would be any challenges whatsoever even sleeping with
these in and I could not imagine a
scenario where I could get them out of my ears they haven't budged it all not
even a little touch sensitive controls on the side so let's just figure out
what all the buttons do I'm assuming a long press is hey there we go I'm in oh
that's the temporary feature that I screwed up on the xm5 unboxing uh so
that's working perfectly fine I will say that with an in-ear it's not as
comfortable because you're kind of pushing it into your ear I guess okay it
works a little better if you just have your whole hand against the side of your head it's still I'd say not as
comfortable as if you had an over the year and I'd like to see a bit of a
shorter delay on it personally but then I could see running into trouble where
if you you are just adjusting your hair or something like that you
just happened I went like this and it's like did I just change the mode now it's
in transparency mode all the time credit to Sony they've done an excellent job of
the transparency mode on this at least as far as my own voice is concerned I
haven't really heard you guys talk much yet but you look pretty good hello yeah
that's extremely natural sounding it's hard to get both right it's hard to get
the sound of the speaker right and the
sound of the surroundings right but Sony has done to my quick ears an excellent
job of that I never really talked about charging the case supports wireless
charging there's also a USBC input here I like this maybe it's old-fashioned but
just give me a freaking pairing button I don't want to have to remember a special
dance for every stupid device in my life
just put put a pairing button on things you hold the button they go into pairing
mode there I I'm just I'm I'm over it I
I do like the whole magical pairing experience thing but
as a backup I just want that Hardware button see even Apple still does it this
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into alright nerds normal audio
definitely an impressive demo you know it really does sound like you're you
know the audio is coming from here and you're in this space where it's reflecting off all the walls and
everything but if you pre-record it um
getting that kind of Imaging into a
stereo source is kind of trivial so I
don't know if they've actually processed this from that same original file or if
they're just kind of cheating wow I
normally try to evaluate this much
earlier in the process for an active noise canceling headphone but never mind
the just general hums of the studio which are completely gone
I could barely hear you guys talking from like I don't know six seven feet
away that's really good and I didn't even
stop to think that the active noise canceling was on because it just it
doesn't have any it doesn't have any kind of pressure feeling it just there's
nothing unpleasant about having it activated available operations on the
left unit okay noise canceling Ambient
sound hello my you've kind of really got a mash on it though which
to be clear is probably a good thing because you don't want to be laying on a
pillow or you know just brushing against it and having it activate so I get it I
will say that compared to a more a more
rounded shape here this flatter shape
right along the back here is not as
comfortable for me so when I press if I
were to press on this in my ear it's it
has more to to brace on you know in the outer part of my ear whereas with this
one when I press on it to activate something I am jamming that thing
further into my ear
sorry oh yeah sorry sorry just
the noise canceling works by default the right side has functions already bound
tap double tap triple tap I wish the double and triple tap registered a
little faster is amazing what a difference good active noise canceling
makes to how loud you feel like you have to
turn up your music if there's a strong argument to be made for just springing
for ANC just to make sure you're not turning up your music so loud that
you're going to damage your ears different EQ presets are here
honestly these have a more balanced sound right out of the box than the xm5s
did that's annoying that's the thing about touch controls man I do like the
stem squeeze on the airpods pros touch anytime you go to adjust them you're
liable to control something
did you hear the train oh I I don't even have active noise canceling on right now
I'm just in passive mode what yeah no it's just off right now
because they isolate noise well that's why I thought The Branding was so
confusing because the regular link buds are all about letting ambient noise
through well let's throw on the noise canceling like is it doing things yeah I
have no awareness of that whatsoever we are going to be finalizing which head
and torso we're going to be using for audio reviews on LTT moving forward uh
probably today I think we're actually sending back the other one tomorrow so
we can get you guys real numbers but I would I would bet at least lunch with
our new audio guy that these have extremely strong ANC to my ear they also
sound excellent right out of the box as well I'm liking them at 199 yeah you got
my attention Sony killer subscribe